$75,000 Needed To Make Fort Smith Walking Trails Safer

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FORT SMITH (KFSM) -- The director of Fort Smith Parks and Recreation will go before city board members and ask them to approve the use of $75,000 to purchase two utility task vehicles and two mowers.

In a memo addressed to City Administrator Carl Geffken, director Doug Reinert addressed the growth of walking trails within city limits.

The memo stated that planning and construction of the Fort Smith Trail System began to pick up steam in 2015. Seven miles of sharrows and 5 miles of hard surface trails are currently in use with another 8 miles planned to be constructed by the end of 2017.

"The trails system, I don't think two years ago they thought that we would be where we are at today as far as having the amount of trails built," Reinert said.

Reinert said the UTV'S would be used for the Fort Smith Police Department.

"The access to these trails is very limited as far as being able to get police cruisers, emergency vehicles such as fire trucks and ambulances in there in case there is some sort of medical event or some sort of deviant behavior," he said.

All this maintenance wasn’t thought about before the money was spent to build these things that a small group made so much noise about swearing they were necessary for the flood of people who wanted and needed them. We just had to do this in order to keep pace with the NWA crowd. Truth is if you were to drop Wally World and Tysons in Mulberry AR it would be the boom area. Take Wally World out of NWA and NWA will evaporate. The NWA crowd isn’t endowed with the Midas touch, they are simply lucky.
How about this, put toll gates on these paths and let the throngs of users cover the costs.